


How to Make a Deal With the Devil

by ohmyfae



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: AU, Gods and Spirits, Guest appearances by the bros, M/M, Trickster god Ardyn, references to/visions of a hanging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 05:24:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12574648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae
Summary: Prompto Argentum is a man who can see gods. Ardyn Izunia is a trickster god with too much time on his hands and a deep, resounding distrust in humanity. He also won't leave Prompto alone.A Halloween fic!





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this a while back for the kinkmeme, and just edited it on my phone, so it should all be up today! (I'm not on hiatus, I just don't have internet!)

When Prompto Argentum was eleven years old, he raced into the living room in a rush of dirt and grass cuttings, and announced that there was a man lying under the orange tree.

Mrs. Argentum went pale and ordered him to stay put, but Prompto followed her anyways, pattering at her heels. When they reached the orange tree, its branches laden with frothy white blossoms, Prompto's guardian stopped and frowned. 

"There's no one there," she said. "Are you sure you saw him?"

"He's still here," Prompto said. He pointed to a bare patch of grass and clover. "Look, he's got a hat on his face like he's sleeping, and his hair's all purple, and his jacket has roses on it--"

"Honey." Mrs. Argentum placed her hands on his shoulders. "We discussed this when Uncle Verstael brought you to live with us. No stories."

"I'm not lying," Prompto said, in a soft voice. "He's there, look, I can touch him."

"Prompto. You're a nice boy." Mrs. Argentum's eyes were pinched tight. "You do your chores, you're obedient, you don't talk back... But this. Talking about... about little people in shrines, or imaginary men, or birds that aren't there..."

"But they were."

"Your father sent you here for a reason, Prompto," she said, and Prompto's indignant expression fell apart, piece by terrible piece. "I'm sorry. But if you want to go home one day, you need to put this play-acting behind you."

Prompto was silent.

"Oh, please don't act tragic." Mrs. Argentum straightened and wrung out her hands. "I'll have lunch ready in an hour. Try to clean up before you come in."

She turned and strode across the lawn, leaving Prompto under the wide orange tree, staring after her.

"I thought this _was_ home," he whispered.

"I can turn her into something, if you like," said the man lying under the tree. Prompto twisted around in time to see him lift the silk hat off his face, revealing a tilted smile and the suggestion of stubble. His hair was dark in the shadow of the leaves, but it had a tint of purple, just like the scarf that wound around his neck.

Prompto rolled his eyes. "That's impossible."

"So is talking to gods, and yet here we are." The man sat up, and Prompto noticed that his hair didn't have bits of grass or dirt in it the way Prompto's always did when he played in the yard. Even his clothes looked perfect. 

"Oh!" Prompto said. "You're like the god down the street! The one in the little house under the apple tree."

The man sitting before him sputtered in outrage. "Like the... Do I look like the guardian of a tree? A fawning creature that gives out... good luck, and petty blessings?"

Prompto shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "The god down the street doesn't really bless people. He just eats apples and sleeps a lot."

"Well." The god under the orange tree adjusted his cuffs. "I am _not_ that type of god."

"You _were_ sleeping, though."

"Will you--" The god closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I," he said, placing the hat on his head at an angle, "am more than just a god." His voice lowered, taking on a sing-song quality, and Prompto leaned closer. "I am one of the few who stand apart, who opened their eyes after the frailties of the flesh failed them and saw the world laid bare for what it always was. I can make this tree small enough to crush in your fist. I can turn that woman into a beetle, or a sparrow. I can snap my fingers," he snapped, and Prompto jumped. "And bring your father here, kind and loving and dreadfully sorry." 

"He's never sorry," Prompto said. He took a step back, and the god stood, towering over him.

"I can paint over the stars," the god said. He took a heavy step forward, and Prompto's heart clenched in terror. "I can twist time, pull apart the fabric of reality, make one sunset last eighty years. I can make every tree in this town wither and bring all those little useless gods to their knees..."

"And you can see me," he said, when he'd backed Prompto into the garden hose. "And I know your face. Lucky you."

Prompto looked into the god's eyes, merciless and cold as a summer storm, and fled for the door. The god appeared before him, brows lowered, arms crossed in front of his chest. He tsked, and Prompto glanced at the fence, where a dog he'd looked after once had dug a hole that no one bothered filling in. Maybe if he ran...

"I've decided," the god said. "I think I'd like to keep you."

"You can't," Prompto said. "People will notice."

The god smiled. "Will they care?"

Prompto bit down on his lower lip, sighed loudly, and turned on his heel. The god laughed.

"Oh, bless you." He appeared at Prompto's side, easily keeping pace with him. "I have a proposition for you, if you'll consider it," he said. Prompto gave him a baleful look. "I can use a servant. Someone with spirit, who can serve as a bridge between the miserable wretches of this town and myself. I believe you would do quite nicely, given time."

"Wow, thanks."

"Don't mention it." The god tucked his hands in his pockets. "I can tell you aren't convinced. Let's see..." He halted, and Prompto craned his neck to watch him track the movement of clouds scuttling across the sky. 

"I know," he said. "How about a wager?"

 

\---

 

When Prompto Argentum was thirteen, he disappeared for three days. He was found in the woods at the edge of town at midnight of the third night, sitting on a broken stone plinth with one leg drawn to his chest, his fingers scraped raw and pink, a small guitar dangling from one hand. The leader of the search party trained her flashlight on the boy, who blinked and held up an arm to block out the light.

“He just gave it to me,” he said, when the guitar was taken from him for a thorough inspection. It was a beautiful instrument, made of dark wood with steel strings, but the boy wouldn’t give the name of the man who’d given it to him. He just kept glancing over to the side of the crowd, into the darkness of the wood, and made no protest when his guardians bundled him up and marched him back home. 

Sometimes, in the night, the Argentums would wake to the sound of him picking his way through a melody on the guitar. The guitar had a mournful tone to it, like a chorus of human voices winding around the vibration of the strings, forming words in a language they only halfway understood. Mr. Argentum locked it in the attic after a month, where it collected dust amid boxes of holiday ornaments and forgotten bed linens.

Prompto disappeared again a few months later, then again on his fourteenth birthday. He could be found skipping school to pick berries off every other bush by the creek, or dig through stones and line them up in odd, circular patterns, or climb trees so tall that he’d be swinging precariously from whipping branches that whistled in a high wind. Neighbors caught him teaching himself how to climb fences and walls, a farmer a few acres down chased him out of an abandoned field for digging holes into the earth at random, and he was suspended from school for five days after he filled three blackboards with what the vice principal called arcane gibberish. 

And the whole time, everyone who watched him heard the boy muttering under his breath.

“You promised an hour,” Mrs. Vega heard him say after she shooed him out of her garden. He held a bright purple and black snake in one hand, glaring at it as it twined its way up his arm. “You said an hour, and I have twelve minutes left. Don’t be an asshole.”

“I’m not doing it,” the milkman heard him tell a fox in the bushes outside his house. “I have exams today. If you’re so bored, find someone else.”

“What did I tell you, dude?” he shouted, when his classmates tailed him behind the toolshed one afternoon. He gestured into the empty air with both hands. “It’s your fault for cursing the butter in the first place! Now the lunchlady’s a chocobo, and that’s all on you, buddy.”

The odd thing about that, his classmates agreed, after they’d left Prompto cursing in pain in one of the PE lockers, was that the lunchlady had been absent that day, and the principal had closed school early due to a wild chocobo breaking into the running track. But then, they reasoned, even as the locker door sprung open on its own accord and Prompto went spilling out, held up as though by invisible hands, weird shit always seemed to follow the Argentum kid.

So it was no surprise when the Argentums finally washed their hands of the boy.

At the age of seventeen, Prompto was dumped outside the front door of the home he’d lived in for most of his life, with nothing more than a suitcase, a guitar, two pairs of squashy black boots, and a music box that shuddered against the heavy leather straps he’d used to keep it closed. He sat down on the edge of his suitcase and checked a gold watch on his wrist, which always showed the exact time, and turned to the man leaning against the Argentum family fence.

“I know you’re not sorry,” he said, “but I’d kind of like to hear it anyways.”

The god, who went by Ardyn on days when he was feeling magnanimous, straightened his high, ruffled collar. “I grovel at your feet, my dear,” he said. Prompto snorted.

“Never mind.” Prompto dug in the top zipper of his suitcase and pulled out a garish pink and blue piece of candy, which he tossed at the god before pulling out a piece for himself. The sounds of high summer washed over them as they watched a low wind drag at the dust on the road: Cicadas screeching in the trees, house doors slamming, the rattle of air conditioners and the occasional squawk of a distant chocobo. Finally, a cart creaked and groaned its way over the curve of the street, and Prompto got up, holding his guitar close. 

“Hey, kid,” said the man at the front of the cart. “You’re the one moving into the old Besithia place?”

“Guess so,” Prompto said. He frowned as Ardyn appeared in the bed of the cart, together with all of Prompto’s luggage, but the driver only blinked and shrugged. Prompto climbed into the cart after him, and propped his legs up on the music box. It made a distressed plonk and rattled dangerously.

“You have to admit that this is atrocious behavior on their part,” Ardyn said, as the Argentum house disappeared beyond a turn in the road. “Sending you away like an unwanted pet.”

Prompto sighed. “They never wanted a kid in the first place,” he said. 

“What’s that?” the cart driver asked. 

“Just wondering what the new place is like!” Prompto called. The driver nodded and turned aside. In a softer voice, Prompto said, “Don’t think this changes anything.”

“You’ll have to see it my way sooner or later, my boy,” Ardyn said. He leaned down and placed his hat over Prompto’s messy blond hair, blocking out the glare of the sun. “This town is steeped in petty cruelty. The sooner you come to terms with it, the better off you’ll be.”

“Yeah,” Prompto said, tugging the hat over his eyes. “And then I’ll be yours.”

“Yes,” Ardyn said, in a voice that echoed with the hiss of the wind. “Then you’ll be mine.”

 

The old Besithia place, the last half-hearted scrap of charity Prompto’s father was likely to send his way, was a disaster-zone. It was a small cottage on the edge of town, barely wired for electricity, with water that ran brown and empty rooms crawling with rats. Prompto opened the front door, shrieked at the skittering roaches that fled the light, and spent five minutes on the overgrown front path trying not to hyperventilate.

“You know what?” he said, when he could breathe again. “I could definitely use like, a magic broom. Or a mop that kills bugs. Or a magic camping tent.”

“Or,” said Ardyn, his breath tickling Prompto’s ear, “you can have until sunset tonight to have every speck of dust out of this cottage.”

“Hold on,” Prompto said. “Wait. This isn’t fair, Ardyn, you can’t expect me to—“ But when he looked around, Ardyn was nowhere to be seen. “Fine!” Prompto shouted. “No big deal! I can do this! I can totally do this.”

Four hours later, Prompto sat under a shrine to a local fox god, sharing a wild plum with the half-ghostly creature that curled up under the stone awning. The shrine was a few miles away from Prompto’s new home, forgotten for nearly a century, and the god had tried to trip Prompto up the moment it saw him stumbling through the woods. Now, it tucked its ears back and shuffled its paws in the shrine Prompto had spent the better part of the afternoon dusting off. 

“I can’t do this,” Prompto told it. “There were centipedes. Centipedes, dude. Too many fucking legs.” The fox god glanced at the remains of the plum in Prompto’s hand, and he passed it over. “You don’t think there’s like, a bigger shrine nearby? Somewhere I can crash for a few days? Maybe if I hide out, you-know-who won’t find me.”

The god swallowed down the rest of the plum and shook its head.

“Really?” Prompto crossed his legs. “There were gods all over the place in town. You’re saying there aren’t any here?”

The fox god swung its spectral eyes towards Prompto, and got to its feet. It dropped soundlessly onto the leaves beneath the shrine and took off towards the center of the wood. Prompto followed it. The woods were pine, so old that the bracken had cleared away to make room for what looked like miles of iron grass, which shone gold in the light of the setting sun. Prompto followed the bounding form of the fox god through rows and rows of trees, the grass tickling the tops of his boots, until they reached a small clearing. The fox stopped just at the edge of the clearing and barked. 

“Excuse me,” Prompto said, and stepped into the circle. The air around him felt sharp and cold, chilling the sweat at the back of his neck, and a tight fear coiled heavy in Prompto’s chest. The iron grass in the center of the clearing had died, trampled flat in a perfect circle, and when Prompto looked up, that circle was reflected in a spot of light through the trees overhead.

The fox barked again, and Prompto’s breath left him.

Directly over him, so close that the tips of his boots nearly touched Prompto’s forehead, was a dead man. Prompto staggered back. The man was hanging in midair from a rope that disappeared a few inches from his broken neck, and shadows that didn’t match the branches of the clearing played over his body, obscuring Prompto’s vision. He swung faintly, and Prompto could just make out the line of a jaw, a sharp nose, the curl of his fingers. 

Then the man was gone, and Prompto was alone at the edge of the clearing. 

He didn’t run home. He walked, quickly and carefully, following the line he’d cleaved through the iron grass, until he reached the fox god’s empty shrine. There, he shakily bowed to it—No use being disrespectful, even if the god had tried to scare the ever-loving shit out of him—and, as soon as the line of the woods was behind him, _then_ he broke into a run. 

He pushed open the door of the cottage just as the sun sank below the horizon, and stood there in silence for a good minute before he could bring himself to walk inside.

It was as though he’d stepped into an entirely new house. The walls of the cottage had been scrubbed clean of grime and dust, revealing a dusky green paint and a line of tiles painted with pictures of fawns and flowers. The floors shone, the windows gleamed, and there wasn’t a rat or a centipede to be found. When Prompto opened the door to the bathroom and turned on the tap, the water that ran out was cold and clear as an underground spring. 

“Ardyn?” he called. He ducked into the bedroom, finding only an old bed with his luggage piled neatly on the floor. “Ardyn? Was this you?” 

He wandered back into the living room, and turned to the kitchen. Then he leaned over his newly-polished oven and laughed.

There, sitting on the countertop of his perfectly clean home, was the pit of a plum.


	2. Chapter 2

A few weeks before Prompto’s twenty-first birthday, he stopped in the bakery north of his home and peered into the display case. The little cards in front of the cakes were impossible to read: He worked in the back of the newspaper offices, squirreled away in the dark room where he developed photos and stared into the dim red light over the tubs for most of his shift, and he was still seeing spots. The small cakes in front of him blurred and swam, but he could see well enough to know that most of the other customers were giving him a wide berth. 

“Hello, Prompto.” Ignis, the owner of the café, leaned on his elbows over the display case. “No pixies in the custard today?”

Prompto risked a smile. He still wasn’t sure about Ignis or his dark-haired assistants, who bustled about the café like it was their private living room. Sure, they teased Prompto, but there wasn’t any real heat behind it, and they never kicked him out or refused to serve him. To most of the store owners in town, Prompto was like a virulent case of an unknown flu: No one was sure if his visions were catching, but they weren’t keen on finding out.

“No, you’re good,” Prompto said, and Ignis let out an exaggerated sigh.

“Thank the gods,” he said. “You’ll want the cinnamon twists—Noctis gave them a bit too much kick this morning.”

“Nah, strawberry, thanks,” Prompto said, nodding to a round, pink cake with iced strawberries around the edge. “It’s a bribe.”

“Ah. Of course.” Ignis had the cake boxed in a flash, and he handed it off to his assistant, the large, flour-dusted mountain of a man named Gladio. Gladio glanced at the cake, then to Prompto, and huffed.

“Thought you went for spicy shit,” he said.

“Gladiolus!”

“Sorry, boss,” Gladio said, and winked at Prompto. “That’ll be nine-fifty.”

“Good luck with your bribery!” Ignis called, disappearing into the back. Gladio gave Prompto an arch look, and Prompto flushed brighter than the cake. 

Fall had draped the streets of the town in a blanket of dry, rust-red leaves, and Prompto’s boots kicked a path through them as he left the chaos of the main street behind. He passed the low field where the annual Daemon’s Night festival was held, and stopped for a minute to watch festival workers prop up support beams for tents and pavilions. He allowed himself to wonder, for a brief, selfish moment, what it would be like to actually go to one of the yearly festivals without being turned away at the gate. Maybe when he won Ardyn’s next riddle, he could ask for a mask, or something to change his shape…

Prompto frowned and pushed away from the fence. He didn’t want another riddle. He wanted to be left alone. Sure, he’d messed up when he was young, running around and talking to all the gods and spirits he met on his way to school and back, but he knew better now. If only Ardyn could give him easy tasks, things he could do at home without having some neighbor find him up to his knees in the river, trying to catch a fish in both hands while Ardyn sat on the edge of the bridge and gave bad advice. That had been hard to explain.

“I got you something,” he said, when he opened his front door and toed off his boots. Inside, sitting on the kitchen counter, Ardyn raised his eyebrows.

“Why, Prompto, how on earth did you know I’d be here?” he asked.

“You never leave me alone this time of year,” Prompto said, and handed him the box. “It’s strawberry. There are forks in the—“ He stopped as the cutlery drawer popped open of its own accord, and a fork sailed through the air into Ardyn’s fingers. “You’re welcome?”

“My dear, you are a treat,” Ardyn said, cutting into the cake. “I will enjoy our time together, when you’re mine.”

“Sure, dude,” Prompto said, and patted Ardyn on the knee as he passed. He collapsed on the pile of giant pillows that served as a couch, propping his feet up on an empty crate. When he opened his eyes, Ardyn was standing over him. 

"No,” Prompto groaned, and rolled over. Ardyn laughed. “No. Not today. I bought you a cake.”

“I can’t be won with a little confectioner’s sugar and hope, darling,” Ardyn said. Prompto groaned louder. “Now, now. Don’t be that way. I have a little treat for you, this time.”

Prompto stopped groaning long enough to give Ardyn a dark look. The god smiled indulgently. 

“Oh, I love that expression on you,” he said. “It’s almost as though you think you’ll win.”

“I always do,” Prompto said. Ardyn flapped a hand. 

“Not where it matters. No, my sweet Prompto,” he said, bending down to pat Prompto’s cheek. “I have a special task for you. Tell me…” His voice lowered, soft as a whisper. “No legs have I to dance. No lungs have I to breathe. No life have I to live or die, and yet I do all three.”

Prompto stared up into the ceiling, lips moving as he soundlessly repeated the riddle. 

“What,” Ardyn breathed, “will come to the town at the height of their Daemon’s Night festival, should you not find it first?”

The answer sank into Prompto’s mind with the heavy chill of dread.

“Fire,” he said, and shuddered at the warmth of Ardyn’s breath in his ear. “It’s fire.”

 

\---

 

“Hey! You aren’t allowed in here!” 

Prompto ducked behind a row of paperback books, trying to dodge the town librarian’s clawing hands. “I’m not causing trouble,” he said. “I just want a book! I swear!”

“Well,” the librarian said, lunging for him across a display of children’s books. “You should have thought of that before you destroyed half the mystery section.”

“That was ten years ago!” Prompto squeaked as a firm hand clenched around the back of his collar. For a small woman, the librarian had muscle. 

“Books have long memories,” she said, and dragged him doggedly towards the door. In her rush to push Prompto out of the building, she failed to notice the square lump in his vest, just under his crossed arms.

Prompto stood outside the library, clutching his stolen book and feeling more than a little lost. The bookstore banned him when he was fifteen, when he’d solved a puzzle from Ardyn that involved decoding a riddle hidden in a series of fantasy books. The school wouldn’t let him go within two blocks, not after the water heater incident, and his… the Argentums may have had a library of their own, but it wasn’t likely to include anything about gods or the occult. 

He knew that finding Ardyn’s mysterious fire in two weeks was probably possible. He also knew that if he didn't stop him now, it would never end. Prompto would be eighty, wandering around the fields outside of town, picking bits of golden wool off thistles or something. So what he had to do was find a way to take out Ardyn. If he could trick him somehow, maybe bind him to his will the way Ardyn wanted to bind Prompto… 

He locked himself in his bathroom that night with a cup of tea, a box of crackers, and a towel shoved tight under the gap in the door. The bathroom was the one place Ardyn didn’t randomly appear, not after that awkward morning when Prompto was nineteen and he’d nearly broken his leg trying to get the shower curtain around himself in time. 

The book was an old one, written almost a hundred years before and documenting what was supposed to be a series of folktales and traditions of people in the Cleigne region. He was surprised to find an entry on the Daemon’s Night festival there, crowded down at the bottom of a page about annual celebrations: 

_Daemon’s Night:_

_Annual Event. First celebrated in ME 002, in honor of Justice Izunia, Witchfinder, and the execution by hanging of the last witch in Lucis._  
  
“Huh.” Prompto followed the endnote attached to Justice Izunia, and flipped through the book until he reached the chapter labeled Witchfinders. Izunia had a whole half of the chapter to himself, and there were pieces of his translated journal scattered here and there, documenting his search for the last witch. 

”The creature claims to be a man of flesh and bone,” he said, ”but its daemonic nature is revealed by the power in its hands, called forth like a light as it reverses the gods-given process of human aging and decay.”

He went on to explain how the witch had cured people by touching them, setting broken bones, easing coughs, even eradicating a plague in his village. When the witch was finally captured, his hands were burned and he was hanged in the woods, then his body buried beneath the spot of his execution. 

“Wow,” Prompto said. “No one tell this guy about doctors.” 

The rest of the book was pretty much the same: All excerpts from diaries and official reports, nothing practical. The only thing he could find that was anywhere near what he could use was towards the back, in a second-hand anecdote on how a young woman had bound a daemon to her in a sort of last-ditch marriage. 

Marriage wasn't exactly what he was looking for, but if it was binding...

Prompto ran his thumb over the page, ripped it out, and crumpled it in the tub. As the ink ran together, forming a faint cloud in the bathwater, Prompto stepped out and examined his own pale, heat-flushed face in the bathroom mirror. 

He had no other option. Before the end of the Daemon’s Night festival, he would have to marry a god.

 

\---

 

The god who called himself Ardyn sat on the low branch of a rowan tree, watching Prompto lay out a long black ribbon in a patch of moonlight. The young man crouched over it, poking the ribbon into shape, and sat down on the damp grass. 

It was an old ritual, one that Ardyn had heard of in whispers in his past life. Some poor girl had thought to bind herself to a daemon, thinking it bore the soul of her lover, and had made herself a spell of thread, moonlight, and will. The trouble there was that a binding always went both ways. At the time, Ardyn had considered it tragic. Now, he only thought of it as a waste.

He held a hand over the ribbon, disrupting the moonlight with a shadow that even Prompto, with his unnatural eyesight, couldn't see, and waited for the spell to unravel. 

It was a clever gambit, if a little desperate, but Prompto had long since proved himself to work best under pressure. He could find ways to twist out of a bargain that hardly needed Ardyn's assistance at all. Not, of course, that Ardyn helped. It would just be... boring, if Prompto lost so soon, so Ardyn took care to tip the scales in Prompto's favor from time to time. 

Like the day he'd held back the sunset for a few minutes so that fox friend of his could clean the house. Or the day he summoned a starling to fly into the back door, or when he made the shadow of a tree spell out the answer to one of his riddles, making it look like one of the local tree guardians was taking pity. Little things. 

In the shadow of the rowan tree, Prompto's hair took on a silvery hue, and his dark lashes framed his eyes like the blade of a knife. His hands, which were so deft when cleaning the clockwork of Ardyn's latest gift, or picking over the strings of his old guitar, brushed over the ribbon with something almost like reverence. What was he thinking? Of Ardyn? Of being free from his tests, his constant riddles, his presence? Ardyn leaned forward, and Prompto glanced up.

Quick as a blink, Ardyn moved to the roof. Prompto stared at the tree branches for a long moment, then turned back to his now useless ribbon spell, sitting alone in the moonlit lawn like one of the hedgewitches of Ardyn's time, or a wizard from his grandmother's, clever and young and achingly beautiful.

 

\---

 

It took three nights for the spell to reach potency, according to the ruined book Prompto stole from the library. When the last night was done, and Prompto woke up on a towel in the yard to find he'd somehow wrapped the ribbon around his fingers in his sleep, he rolled it around his wrist so it could absorb his... essence, the spell had said... and went to work.

The Daemon's Night festival was to take place that evening, and the town had transformed into a roiling chaos of activity. Children raced across the street already in costume, storefronts changed their curtains for black gauze and fake spiderwebs, masks hung from lampposts, and there was a bonfire in the center of the festival field, complete with a figure of the last witch. Now that Prompto knew a little of the witch's history, he wasn't sure how he felt about seeing the faceless dummy slumped over the wood-pile. He kept his gaze averted as he passed the field towards home that afternoon, and entered his house carefully, checking first to make sure if Ardyn was there. 

He wasn't, which was starting to worry Prompto. He was so used to Ardyn being a constant presence at that time of year that his cottage felt strangely empty. Picking out a haphazard costume for the festival had little appeal without Ardyn's sardonic comments and advice, and the ribbon around his wrist felt unnaturally tight. He loosened the knot and dug through his closet for something he could use as a mask. 

There, sitting on the floor of his closet, was a black half-mask with slits where the eyes should be. Prompto picked it up, stared at it for a long moment, and took it to the bathroom. There, he dumped it in the sink and turned on the tap, letting the running water rush over its glossy surface.

"Prompto," came Ardyn's unmistakable voice, and Prompto turned to see the god leaning against the door frame. "I'm wounded."

"I'm not wearing an enchanted mask," Prompto said. He shook out the mask and dried it off with one of his hand towels. "What was it supposed to do?"

Ardyn sighed. "I'm not saying that it would make you the most charming man in town," he said, "but I'm not saying it wouldn't, either."

"Charming or charmed?" Prompto asked. He wondered if he should get out his jar of salt water for breaking trickier spells, just in case, but Ardyn only shrugged. 

"Have you figured out where I'm keeping the fire?" Ardyn asked, as Prompto fitted the formerly-enchanted mask over his face. His vision narrowed, and he had to turn to get a good look at Ardyn. 

"Don't have to," he said, feeling the pressure of the ribbon on his wrist. Ardyn smiled. 

"So confident," he said. "Well. We'll see tonight, won't we, my dear?" He vanished on the spot, leaving only a lingering scent of woodsmoke and honeysuckle. Prompto sighed and readjusted his mask. 

"That's right," he said, swallowing around the hard lump in his throat. "Tonight."


	3. Chapter 3

When Prompto walked through the gate to the festival grounds, the first thing he saw was the bonfire.

The bonfire sat in the center of the field, with green wood stacked at the top to give the effigy of the witch more time to burn. A crowd was already gathered around the fire, with people throwing in herbs and sachets to give off fragrant smoke, and young teens tossed wishes scrawled on bits of rolled-up paper. Beyond that, there were musicians on a raised stage, playing string instruments and drums, while a young woman in a black dress moved in what Prompto assumed was probably a dance. Proper dancers moved in spirals throughout the field, following steps Prompto never learned, framed by the colorful awnings of food carts and prize counters.

When Prompto was young, he used to beg to go to the yearly festivals. The Argentums had only told him that if he wanted to be a true Besithia one day, it would be best to avoid anything that encouraged dangerous notions. But it seemed that regardless how hard they tried to keep him on the narrow path, Prompto was always wandering off.

Now, Prompto stared at the masked, costumed figures twirling in the damp grass of evening, and felt a small, fierce joy unfurl in his chest. He rubbed the ribbon at his wrist—another reminder—and let the crowd consume him.

That Ardyn would be there was a given. He liked to people-watch, so Prompto passed the food carts first, idly checking the stoves of each stall just in case Ardyn had hidden his elusive fire there. He was bending over a tray of tarts at Ignis’ café’s cart when he felt a small hand grab at his sleeve. The girl with her hand on his costume had a plain white mask, with small eyeholes that shone with a steady orange light.

“You’re the boy who can see us,” she said. Prompto crouched so he could be on eye-level, and nodded.

“Do you know where Ardyn is?” he asked. “You know Ardyn, right?”

The girl laughed and pointed to the bonfire. Prompto glanced up, but the crowd was too thick, and he couldn’t make out anything beyond the occasional flash of a bright costume.

“Dance with us,” the girl said. She tugged at Prompto’s sleeve, then turned at the sound of voices coming their way.

“Susie, what are you doing?” asked a girl in a butterfly mask. “We’re gonna go dancing!”

“I’m coming!” the girl cried, and let go of Prompto. When she looked back, her mask was painted like a winking owl, and it was the girl who had called out to her who wore the faceless mask this time. She waved, and Prompto waved back. 

Prompto did try to make it to the bonfire, but a few yards in, his hands were gripped by a tall man in yet another faceless mask. His gold eyes shone, and he laughed, stamped his feet, and swept Prompto into the throng of dancers. He released Prompto into the arms of a woman, whose golden cat mask went white and unpainted the moment his hands went to her waist, and she guided him through the steps of a song Prompto had only ever heard in passing. 

“It’s a shame one of us didn’t claim you first,” she shouted, as they held hands in a line that practically raced around the clapping dancers in the center. 

“What do you mean?” Prompto shouted back. Then another faceless spirit grabbed him by the waist and spun him in a dizzying swirl of color and light. 

“So many of us wanted you,” the new spirit said. “You’re so nice to us. You do little chores, and lay out offerings, and you never complain. Not once.”

“I complain to Ardyn all the time,” Prompto said. The spirit shrugged, and pushed him into the arms of another. 

“He isn’t really one of us,” this spirit said. “Just like you aren’t really one of them.” Prompto narrowed his eyes, and the gold light behind the mask flickered. “You’re human, but you’re apart. Just like he was.”

“Like… like Ardyn…?” Prompto gasped, but he was caught up in another winding circle, borne forward through the force of the crowd. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He couldn’t tell how much time he had, and if Ardyn was at the bonfire, that was probably where it was all going to begin. A pair of hands pushed the small of his back, and he went staggering out of the line, right into the large, calloused hands of a tall man in a silver mask in the shape of a skull. The mask came with a black veil, strung with shredded red and black ribbons, and the eyes behind the mask flashed gold, just for a moment. Another spirit, then. 

The spirit led Prompto into a dance that was close to what the people around them were doing, but different enough that they had to give them both a wide berth. Prompto struggled to keep up, made breathless by the relentless pace and the steady warmth of his partner’s body. When the musicians stopped for a break between sets, Prompto was sweating through his costume, panting hard, and one of the spirit’s hands was clenched tight in his, the other wrapped possessively around his waist.

“That was… amazing,” Prompto admitted, through heaving gasps. The spirit let go of his waist and tilted up the silver mask.

“It was a pleasure,” Ardyn said. His amber eyes glinted in the firelight. 

Prompto lifted his own mask. The air around them felt strangely warm, charged like the tickle of unease before a lightning strike. Prompto stared up at him, and was surprised to find relief coursing through him, easing the tension of his shoulders and back. 

“Thought I’d never find you,” he said. 

“I’m never very far,” said Ardyn. He touched Prompto’s cheek, and Prompto felt a strange thrill race over his skin. It’s the dancing, he thought. I’m just moving too fast right now.

Never mind that they were both standing still. Never mind that they didn’t move, not even when the fiddle player struck up a reel, even when the crowd surged around them like the coils of a snake. 

“Black suits you,” Ardyn said. 

“You’re never gonna leave me alone, are you?” Prompto asked. He teased the knot of the ribbon loose with one hand. Ardyn smiled, indulgent and oddly fond.

“Oh, I doubt you’d want me to,” he said. “What would you do without my scintillating company?”

“Get more sleep, maybe,” Prompto said, and Ardyn laughed. This was all going wrong. Ardyn was supposed to ask him about the fire, or make another wager, try to convince Prompto to be his kept servant one more time. He wasn’t supposed to smile at him, or dance with him, or… or hold his hand…

Prompto whipped the ribbon free, and Ardyn’s smile widened.

“If you’re gonna stick around,” Prompto said, “I’m gonna need protection. We’ll do it by my rules.”

“I tremble in suspense,” Ardyn whispered. Prompto wrapped the ribbon around their joined hands, and gripped Ardyn tight. 

“By moonlight and breath I bind you,” he said in a rush, before Ardyn could react. Then he stepped forward, close enough that the folds of Ardyn’s strange black robes brushed against him, and stood on his tiptoes to kiss him. 

Ardyn’s eyebrows rose, but he allowed only a fraction of a second to pass before he kissed Prompto back. Prompto had meant it to be a chaste kiss, purely ceremonial, but as soon as he felt the scrape of Ardyn’s stubble and tasted the salt on his lips, it was like he was back in the dance, whirling and spinning and unable—or unwilling—to jump out. Ardyn held his mask higher and deepened the kiss, exploring Prompto’s mouth with an expert tongue, and Prompto felt heat rise in his belly, as though the fire Ardyn promised were in him, lighting him up from the inside out.

Ardyn pulled back first, and looked down at Prompto with more than a little surprise. 

“That was…” He cleared his throat. “Delightful. But I fear your spell didn’t take.” 

Prompto looked to the ribbon and cried out in dismay as it crumbled to dust over their joined hands. He let go, and Ardyn shrugged.

“That particular binding goes both ways,” he said, “and I believe it didn’t soak up quite as much moonlight as you thought. You needed three full nights at least, Prompto. Not two nights and a little shadow.”

Prompto cursed, but there was an edge to his disappointment that he couldn’t place. He tried to step back to get a closer look at Ardyn without craning his neck, but Ardyn wrapped both arms around his waist.

“Dance with me again,” Ardyn said. “Then tell me where I hid my fire.”

“It’s in the bonfire,” Prompto said. “In the witch.” It was the logical place. Ardyn would probably think it poetic justice, taking out half the town with the effigy of someone their ancestors wrongly executed. “That’s not important. If you knew it wasn’t going to work, why’d you kiss me?”

“Good question,” Ardyn said. “Dance with me again, and perhaps we’ll both find an answer.”

Prompto fit his mask back on, and reached up to lower the silver skull over Ardyn’s face. 

“Alright,” he said, just as the reel ended. The drummer and guitarist took over, and Prompto gasped as he was sent into the crowd again, sinking into the heady thrill of the dance, of the night, of Ardyn's warm eyes watching him, always, always.

 

\---

 

Prompto's front door slammed open with a bang that made the strings of his enchanted guitar rattle mournfully. He spilled out into the entranceway, a breathless, tilting, laughing mess of a man, tripping over his own boots and collapsing in the foyer with his costume hiked up to his thighs.

"I can't believe you convinced a fire sprite to hang out in the bonfire," he said, tugging uselessly on his shoes. "You know those guys don't wake up for anyone."

"A lapse of judgment on my part, certainly," said Ardyn. His costume disappeared like smoke as he passed through the doorway, changing back to his usual jacket and high ruffled collar, and he knelt to help Prompto with his boots. 

"You're always having those," Prompto said. He felt light-headed with too much dancing, and maybe just a little too bold. "Like when you pushed me in the field with all the spirit berries when I was seventeen."

"I couldn't know they would cause you to win our wager, Prompto." Ardyn's grip on Prompto's leg was warm. Familiar. 

"Or when you helped me win the three and a quarter league boots," Prompto said.

"That's hardly a thrilling prize."

"Or the guitar."

Ardyn shrugged.

"Or," Prompto said, and he hunched over, placing his hands on Ardyn's, "the time you made Dad forget where he was when he got pissed at me, that day he came to visit. Or when you sat up and talked to me when I had nightmares, or when you chased away that demon from the Ulric house."

"It wanted you for its own," Ardyn said, in a light voice that Prompto was only just starting to understand. "I've put a certain amount of investment into making you mine, one day."

"Yeah," Prompto said. "You have."

They watched one another warily, there in Prompto's small cottage, surrounded by the trill of crickets and the hush of wind on the roof. Then Prompto leaned in and kissed him, taking in the bitter, not altogether human taste of woodsmoke on Ardyn's tongue.

"There's more than one way to make someone yours, you know," he said.

It was a marvel that they remembered to shut the front door.

The walls shook as Prompto fell back in the hallway, shoulders pressed to the bright, rough paint as Ardyn lifted him under the thighs like he weighed nothing, kissing him with the same slow intensity he reserved for planning his best and most difficult wagers. Prompto's own kisses were more than a little sloppy, enthusiastic but lacking any experience beyond an awkward make-out session during his senior dance in high school. Thankfully Ardyn was, as always, helpful to a fault. He teased Prompto with lingering kisses as they stumbled to the bedroom, Prompto still clinging to his waist, and dumped him on the bed with a look that sent a shiver of anticipation through Prompto's veins. 

"So," Prompto said, as Ardyn climbed over him. "How, uh. How does it work? With a god? I mean, do you have...an actual body, or..."

Ardyn raised an eyebrow. "I can leave," he said.

"No!" Prompto wrapped his arms around Ardyn's neck, holding him in place. "No, I'm good. I just. I've never seen you without that jacket on, so..."

"That can change," Ardyn said.

Prompto reached up to pull off Ardyn's scarf, then jumped, banging his forehead against Ardyn's jaw, as the god's clothes just--dissipated, dissolving into the cool night air. 

"Oh, well, if you have magic, why not," he said. Ardyn shrugged his bare, impressively muscled shoulders, and Prompto squinted in the shadow of his body. There, like a tattoo around his neck, was a rough, thick weal, bunching up the skin in a perfect circle. Prompto raised a hand, and Ardyn intercepted him, moving his hand to settle on Ardyn's waist instead.

"Best not," he whispered, and kissed Prompto again.

Prompto didn't exactly have a frame of reference for having sex with spirits. It wasn't something he talked about, even with the gods who did more than stare at him and speak in riddles. The most he knew of the human way of doing things was that it was either mind-blowing or terrible, and if you didn't know what you were doing, it might even hurt.

This... didn't hurt. When Ardyn's kisses shifted further down, when he lifted Prompto's costume off his body and pressed him into the mattress in his broad hands, it felt like falling. It felt like the sharp jolt that happened when Prompto's body jerked him out of dreams in the night, except instead of feeling the weight of his mattress beneath him, he kept falling, down, down, in a dizzying descent that left him gasping. 

He was weightless, passing through Ardyn's touch on his skin as though he were rushing through a canopy of brittle leaves. He could smell smoke, and earth, and the sharp, bright scent of fresh water. There were voices there, maybe Ardyn's, maybe someone else, muffled and faint and speaking in an accent too thick to recognize. And through it all, Ardyn stroked and kissed and opened him up, exposing him to this strange in-between place, where the white ceiling of his bedroom fell away to reveal a sky full of stars.

When he came down again, returning to his own bedroom with the heaving, shaking breath that came with the best orgasm of his life, Prompto was just in time to see Ardyn staring down at him with an expression Prompto had never seen before. Prompto touched his face, cupping his cheek in a hand, and was startled to find dampness at the corner of Ardyn's eye.

"We should do this again," Prompto said, and when Ardyn smiled, he brushed a thumb over his lips, memorizing the shape of him.

"As you command," Ardyn said, and they fell, once again, into that strange and distant sky.

 

\---

 

That night, with the body of a god in his arms, Prompto dreamed of a plague.

It was a horrible disease, one that atrophied the muscles and caused a thirst that drove its victims to desperation, laying waste to entire towns in a slow, unstoppable march across the countryside. Prompto saw it appear in small children first, watched them arrive limp and feverish in their parents arms at the door to what looked like an apothecary. And when they came, it was Ardyn who let them in.

Ardyn looked much the same as he did in Prompto's waking life, with the same high collars and gaudy scarves, the same array of silk hats hanging from hooks in his imaginary shop. This Ardyn laid the children out on cots, rolled up his sleeves, and leaned down to speak to them. His accent was too strange to understand, but the children smiled or nodded or simply stared, too gone to react. Then he placed his hands on their chests and made an exaggerated gesture, like he was taking a deep breath. 

The children breathed with him, and light poured out from Ardyn's hands. It sank into their skin, chasing out a darkness Prompto could only barely see, smoothing out their cracked lips and bringing warmth back to their faces. When Ardyn was done, they were no longer shaking from a dry fever, and Ardyn leaned back in his chair, exhausted, as their parents took them. He shook his head and smiled when one of them tried to hand him a leather packet, and, in a gesture Prompto knew well, picked up a hat and tipped it over his forehead, blocking out the rest of the world. 

Prompto opened his eyes. Ardyn lay beside him, an arm wrapped around his waist, breath warm on his temple. He was still naked, and when Prompto tried to sit up, he huffed and tightened his hold. Prompto gently brushed Ardyn's hair from his cheeks, and stared at the weal around his neck, red and angry and thick as a rope.


	4. Chapter 4

The next morning dawned grey and cool, with a breeze drifting over Prompto’s bed from the open window and rustling the photos he’d pinned to the wall. He shivered—the heat of Ardyn’s presence at his side was gone, leaving the sheets beneath him rumpled and cold—and sat up, drawing his legs to his chest. Ardyn sat on the windowsill, one leg swung over the outside wall, the other foot propped up on the wide wooden frame. He was fully clothed again, down to his silk hat and mismatched scarf, and he was walking a coin over his knuckles. It flashed in the muted sunlight, and Prompto thought of how those hands had felt on his body, holding him with the reverent patience only a god could possess.

“Hey,” he said.

Ardyn glanced his way, and the coin vanished. “Prompto.” He climbed down from the window with a broad, guileless smile, and leaned over him, taking his face in both hands. He kissed him slowly, sweetly, savoring the taste of him, and drew back. “Are you ready to begin?”

Prompto blinked. “Begin what?”

“Your apprenticeship, of course.” Ardyn sank onto the bed, and set his hat over Prompto’s bedraggled hair, twisting it to get the angle just right. “I would have preferred to start last night—for dramatic effect, you understand—but if we wait ‘til the winter solstice, we can be well and truly prepared.”

Prompto didn’t speak. The hat smelled like Ardyn, with undertones of that odd, old scent of smoke. 

“Between the two of us,” Ardyn said, taking Prompto’s hands, “with your ability to walk among humans and gods alike, we can bring this town to it’s—“ 

“No.” Prompto pushed Ardyn’s hands away. “That’s not what… That’s not what last night was about, Ardyn.”

Ardyn’s face shifted, an unfamiliar expression of pain flickering in his eyes. “Ah. You still have lingering attachments. It’s astounding, Prompto, what a human being can handle before he breaks. What reason do you have to care?” He lifted Prompto’s chin, gazing into his eyes as though trying to find the answer there. “Your own father discarded you. Your guardians disowned you. Your peers rejected you, and I know you can hear what your neighbors whisper when you pass. They see you, Prompto, a man who can talk to gods, and treat you like a plague carrier.” 

“A plague…” Prompto whispered, his voice soft.

“In my time,” Ardyn said, “they would send those infected with the plague into the woods to die. Did you know? It only bred more disease, of course, but try telling them that. And after they found help in their most desperate hour, they turned—“ he stopped, and took a slow breath. “In the centuries that I’ve watched this town, I’ve yet to find a single person worthy of saving it.”

“Wow,” Prompto said. “Thanks.”

Ardyn shrugged. “You aren’t one of them, my dear,” he said, and though there was fondness in his tone, Prompto wanted to shudder and inch away.

“I am, though,” Prompto said. “And they aren’t like that. There are plenty of good people here. You’re just… I don’t know. You’re stuck. You can’t find the good in anyone because you don’t want to, not because it isn’t there.”

The silence in the bedroom stretched out, long and heavy, with only Prompto’s breath to break the unnatural stillness.

“Very well,” Ardyn said. He sat up, his usually expressive face gone cold and blank. “Name one good person, Prompto. One person in this entire town who hasn’t acted out of their own self-interest. If you can do that, I will concede defeat.”

Prompto stared at the rumpled folds of Ardyn’s scarf, tucked so carefully around his neck. “I don’t know their name,” he said. Ardyn’s brows raised, and Prompto took off his hat, setting it back over Ardyn’s brow. “But I think I can show you where they are.”

 

The pine needles of the woods behind Prompto’s cottage covered the iron grass like a thick, padded blanket, muffling Prompto’s footfalls as he passed through the high rows of trees. Ardyn sighed when he stopped to leave a handful of puffy white crackers on the fox god’s shrine, but remained silent for much of the walk. He didn’t even part the grasses as he matched Prompto’s stride, and his gaze remained fixed on the high, bare branches of the pines above.

Prompto undid the top button of his wine-colored coat, and let out a long, warm breath that steamed in the chilly air. He glanced at Ardyn, who gave him an arch look in reply, and took another exaggerated breath. 

“You know the story behind the witch in the bonfire?” he asked. Ardyn’s expression froze up again, and Prompto turned slightly. “He wasn’t really a witch. He was more like… I don’t know. Someone like me.”

“Really,” Ardyn said. 

“Yeah.” Prompto kicked a clump of pine needles aside. “Last night, there were these spirits. They clued me in. I’m still kind of figuring out the rest.”

“And did the town take as kindly to him as they have to you?” Ardyn asked.

“That’s not the point, man.” Prompto smiled at Ardyn’s look of outrage, and pointed. “There. I knew this was the right direction.”

He stepped out of the grass and into the clearing the fox god had shown him years before. The pine needles had formed a sloping barrier around the circle, which was still stamped flat, and when Prompto turned to face Ardyn, he found that the god had stopped just at the edge. He looked more like a shadow than a man, his form flickering like a mirage in the street on a warm day.

“Here he is,” Prompto said. “The one good man in town.”

Something smooth and hard scraped against his neck. Prompto knew that if he turned around now, he would see the dangling feet of the hanged man. He forced himself to focus on Ardyn.

“They said he cured a plague,” Prompto said. “Back then, people like him—like us, I guess—they were still being hunted down. It would’ve made sense if he just let the plague happen. But he stopped it anyways. And the witchfinder killed him, and the town forgot what he’d done, and they burn him every year in the bonfire.”

Ardyn disappeared for an eyeblink, and Prompto felt the pressure of feet bumping against the back of his head. When Ardyn came back, his jacket was gone, his scarf was slung loose over his neck and chest, and his hands were a blistering shade of red.

“I’ve met him a few times,” Prompto said. Above him, a rope creaked. “He gave me a guitar when I got lost in the woods, and he danced with me last night. Sometimes, he likes to call himself Ardyn.”

“But if he told me his true name, I could win your wager right here.”

Minutes passed. A wind whirled around the clearing, idly stirring up pine needles and bending the iron grass at the god’s shins, before passing through the rows of pine trees with a sorrowful whistle. The rope continued to creak over Prompto’s head, and the shadow of the hanged man started to creep over his shoulder, hiding from the rising sun. 

Ardyn stepped into the circle.

His clothes were no longer impeccable and spotless as Prompto had always known them. His shirt hung from his arms in ragged tatters, revealing the slicing lines of whip weals and purpling bruises. His palms were still red as blood, but Prompto could see now that they were burning, skin bubbling and charring as he came. 

When he stopped before Prompto, the shadow of the hanged man disappeared from Prompto’s shoulder. He raised his hands to Prompto’s face, not quite touching him, leaned in close, and whispered his true name in Prompto’s ear.

 

\---

 

Months passed before anyone thought to check on the old Besithia cottage. The men who’d gone to find the Argentum boy still wore the aprons from their job at the only café that hadn’t banned him, and when they opened the front gate, they saw that one of the windows was wide open, with snow tumbling in from the overburdened roof. Snow piled thick on the walkway to the front door, and the men had to dig it out before it could open onto the cold, dark living room. 

The electricity was off, but they tried the lights anyways, walking through the dusty cottage with a silence reserved for shrines. They examined the small collection of books on the shelf, cringed at the rotting food in the fridge, and puzzled over a bound music box that, when prodded, shuddered and plunked dangerously.

There was a rustle of movement, and the younger of the two men motioned for the back door. 

“Something’s out there,” he said.

He pushed dark bangs out of his eyes as he stepped into the brilliant, snow-covered back yard. His friend followed him, squinting into the empty expanse, and shrugged. 

“An animal, maybe,” he said.

“A fox,” said the younger man.

“What?”

“It was a fox.” He pointed, but his companion only shook his head. “I could’ve sworn… Maybe I was seeing things.”

“Could’ve been,” his friend said, slapping him on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s go. Wherever Prompto is, he sure as hell isn’t here.”

They turned from the lawn, stared into the darkness of the cottage, and walked around the side instead. The back door, which they’d left propped open against a snow drift, slowly clicked shut, and as they made their way back up the dirt road to town, the small, wavering shadow of a fox followed behind, trotting gaily at their heels.

 

\---

 

And hundreds of miles away, in another town much warmer and brighter than the snowy fields of the one he left behind, Prompto Argentum tucked his three-and-a-quarter league boots in his travel bag and unslung the guitar from his back. 

“I like this one,” he said. He sat on an old, crumbling wall overlooking a crater at the edge of town, where a few wind spirits were cackling in the high evergreens. “It has a nice feel to it, you know?”

“Maybe,” said Ardyn. He leaned against the wall and watched Prompto’s fingers slide over the guitar strings, picking out a melody he’d taught him on the road. The guitar didn’t sound so much like wailing anymore, now that Prompto knew what he was doing, but it didn’t sound much like a guitar, either. One or two people passing by in the street stopped to stare. 

“Well, we don’t have to settle down yet,” Prompto whispered, as the onlookers started to inch closer. “It’s not like we’re running short on time.”

“No,” Ardyn said. A small girl jumped forward, a paper bill clenched in her hand, and glanced around. Ardyn set his hat upside down on the ground at Prompto’s feet, and Prompto rolled his eyes.

“Dude,” he breathed. “She can’t see it.”

The little girl darted in, dropped the bill in Ardyn’s hat, and ran back to her parents. She stared up at Ardyn and Prompto with wide, brown eyes, and Ardyn turned to Prompto with a slow smile.

“Don’t get any ideas,” Prompto said. “She’s not old enough to make a bet with a god.” He covered his voice with a riff that sounded like rain falling on a dulcimer, and the growing crowd applauded.

“Never fear.” Ardyn wrapped an arm around Prompto’s waist. “My gambling ways are behind me, my boy.” He kissed him on the temple, and his voice lowered, barely audible under the murmur of the crowd. “Now that you’re mine.”


End file.
